HOW YOKING WITH
THE AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION & MORMON CHURCH ARE IMPACTING CHRISTIAN COUNSELING

By Thomas Littleton
1/5/2019

Tim Keller is on yet another adventure into the abyss in the
name of “redeeming culture.” This time his work is in the realm
of Christian counseling. Keller and The Gospel Coalition decided
in 2010 to make an interfaith American Psychological Association
psychologist the go-to guy on LGBTQ+ issues instead of the Bible
and helped give us the Living Out LGBTQ+ Inclusion Audit for
churches and the radical Revoice conference promoting “LGBT+
flourishing (Tim Keller’s favorite unbiblical word) in historic
(conservative PCA and Southern Baptist etc.) Christian tradition
(i.e. in our churches).

The supposedly orthodox Reformed theological Keller and the
Gospel Coalition he co-founded work very closely with the
Libertarian, Catholic Acton Institute. Acton Institute provides
the chief editor for TGC and has given our
seminaries,
Christian
universities and homeschool curriculum the unbridled but
stealthy influence of Catholic social policy (which is driven by
Catholic theology). The Curriculum and its version of Austrian
School of economics produced the now highly controversial
“fruit” of conservative churches being urged to embrace the
classic social gospel – now touted as “social justice is a
Gospel issue” — resulting in the church being transformed into a
global Communitarian “Village.” That Communitarian church vision
is now charged with distributing justice and redistributing the
wealth of Western Civilization toward “global goals” through the
Church. Keller’s almost 500 church plants have been resourced
for years and trained by the shallow and growth driven corporate
models directly provided to Redeemer Church by the Willow Creek
Association.

If the merging of these spurious influences were the true Gospel
we would all owe Tim Keller and TGC a great debt for the Church
finally recovering and meeting its long-lost call. This is,
however, NOT the Gospel delivered to the Apostles and the New
Testament saints. It is something else — something classically
deceptive, culturally driven and based on a multitude of
ideologies antithetical to the true Gospel and the Word of God.

The question that remains unanswered is, “Will the people of the
PCA and SBC, whose churches and pastors have come under the sway
of Keller and his multitude of errors, follow Keller and his
minions into the ruins of shipwrecked apostates who have gone
before, or will they awaken and rid their churches and
denominations before it is too late.”

The Great Apostasy

1 Timothy 4 (NKJV)
4 Now the Spirit [a]expressly says that in latter times some
will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and
doctrines of demons, 2 speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their
own conscience seared with a hot iron.

2 TIMOTHY 4
3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound
doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have
itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; 4 and
they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned
aside to fables.

NOW KELLER AND REDEEMER HAVE SET THEIR SIGHTS ON PARTNERING
WITH THE APA. INTERFAITH FUNDING, AND THE MORMON CHURCH TO GIVE
AN OVERHAUL TO CHRISTIAN COUNSELING.

Flush with millions from the Interfaith driven grant funding of
The Templeton Foundation, Keller and his Redeemer City
Counseling Department have set out to “influence Christian
Counseling” through partnering with an institution (the APA)
antithetical to Christianity but interested in “Spirituality”
and another religion (Brigham Young University of the Mormon,
LDS faith). The research project is touted to be the largest
such effort ever undertaken.

Templeton Foundation Funding Goals

The Templeton Foundation is “committed to catalyzing research
relating to scientific and spiritual progress, “in which all
people aspire to and attain a deeper understanding of the
universe and their place in it.” It provides philanthropic
funding to projects that explore subjects ranging from
“complexity, evolution and emergence to creativity, forgiveness
and free will.”

“Redeemer Counseling Services has been committed to
conducting research since 2012. Our first project byDr.
Tracy Prout was an outcome study that assessed spirituality
and its influence on the therapeutic alliance. Since then,
Dr. Judy Cha and Elena E. Kim have also conducted
qualitative studies to examine the effects of God Image and
the mechanism of spirituality on the client’s
psychotherapeutic experience.”

Keller boasts in the short video linked above that “Redeemer
Counseling has been given the chance to change the field of
psychology …with the gospel.” Elena Kim is the lead investigator
with the Templeton-funded project. Kim says, “historically the
fields of religion and psychology were not receptive to each
other but there has been a recent focus on spiritually in
psychology which has created a window of opportunity and the
John Templeton Foundation intends to take advantage of this
opportunity.” Judy Cha, the Director of Redeemers Counseling
Center, says, “millions of dollars have been set aside to BRIDGE
(The BYU program name) to counselors (Cha) Clergy (Keller) and
Researchers (Kim) with the goal to bring spiritually orientated
psychotherapy into mainstream healthcare.” “Your involvement,”
says Keller, “can allow Christianity to influence the field of
psychology at a vast cultural level. We, the church, are urged
to join them in their “’historical endeavor to bridge
Christianity and psychology’.”

UNHOLY MIXTURE

In addition to the atheistic roots of psychology add to this the
bland universalism of the “new age” spirituality being espoused
and the interfaith application of the funding research and
outcomes. Redeemer’s team are proud to be working with experts
in the field who are part of the APA partnered project,
headquartered at BYU and of and with the Mormon Religion. Yet
Redeemer participants and Keller call their mutual work a
“validation of Christian integrated psychotherapy.” Thus, Keller
is illustrating again the lack of care or discernment for the
conservative Reformed theology Keller has wrapped himself and
his ministry / TGC in. Keller’s PCA credentials are often all he
needs to retain respectability and acceptance among many
Biblical evangelicals, thanks in large part to their pastors
providing cover for Keller and endorsing him. In PCA/ TGC
churches in this author’s area Keller’s books are often used as
Sunday School study and discussion materials.

“APA’s new Guidelines for Psychological Practice With Boys
and Men strive to recognize and address these problems in
boys and men while remaining sensitive to the field’s
androcentric past. Thirteen years in the making, they draw
on more than 40 years of research showing that traditional
masculinity is psychologically harmful and that socializing
boys to suppress their emotions causes damage that echoes
both inwardly and outwardly.

The needs of men

“Prior to the second-wave feminist movement in the 1960s,
all psychology was the psychology of men. Most major studies
were done only on white men and boys, who stood in as
proxies for humans as a whole. Researchers assumed that
masculinity and femininity were opposite ends of a spectrum,
and “healthy” psychology entailed identifying strongly with
the gender roles conferred by a person’s biological sex.

“But just as this old psychology left out women and people
of color and conformed to gender-role stereotypes, it also
failed to take men’s gendered experiences into account. Once
psychologists began studying the experiences of women
through a gender lens, it became increasingly clear that the
study of men needed the same gender-aware approach, says
Levant.

“The main thrust of the subsequent research is that
traditional masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness,
dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful. Men
socialized in this way are less likely to engage in healthy
behaviors.”

BRIDGES PROJECT DISCUSSED IN REDEEMER VIDEO PARTNERS WITH
BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY

“John Templeton Foundation
awarded Professor P. Scott Richards at Brigham Young
University a $3.57 million dollar grant to conduct a large,
collaborative research study about the processes and
outcomes of spiritually integrated psychotherapy. The
project is a “practice as usual” study of spiritually
integrated psychotherapy with 21 different collaborating
research teams in North America, Israel, and several
additional countries.”

“For most of the 20th century, mainstream healthcare
professionals ignored the role of spirituality in
therapeutic healing. Recently this has changed as scholars
and practitioners have described many spiritual treatment
approaches, grounded in the healing practices of both
Western and Eastern spiritual traditions (e.g., prayer,
meditation, gratitude, love, forgiveness, altruistic
service). Although some research supports these approaches
there are weaknesses with the database. Without a more
satisfactory research base, spiritual approaches will remain
at the fringes of the mental health and medical fields,
which will deprive many people of access to sensitive and
effective services. The long-term aim of our project is to
create an international, interdisciplinary network of
researchers and practitioners dedicated to advancing
research and practice in this domain of mental healthcare. “

“Funding from the Templeton Foundation for this project will
enable us to attract research teams and treatment sites from
around the world to collaborate in creating the largest and
richest data set in existence about spiritually integrated
treatment approaches. Our research and network of
collaborators will help ensure that religious and spiritual
resources for therapeutic change are never again neglected
in the healthcare professions. Spiritually committed people
throughout the world will have greater access to mental
health services that are effective and that honor the
healing resources of their spiritual worldviews and
communities.”

“P. Scott Richards is a licensed psychologist and a full
professor of counseling psychology at Brigham Young
University as well as the Director of Research for the
Center for Change. Dr. Richards received his PhD in
counseling psychology in 1988 from the University of
Minnesota in Minneapolis and he has extensive research
training and experience. He is the author of numerous
scholarly articles in professional journals and has authored
and edited several books published by the American
Psychological Association.”

Daniel K. Judd of the Bridge project is an expert of
“ancient scripture” and the Book of Mormon.

“Bio: Daniel K Judd received an M.S. degree in family
science and a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Brigham
Young University. He has been a seminary and institute
instructor in Utah, Arizona, and Michigan, and he was a
professor of family science at BYU-Idaho. Presently Chair of
the Ancient Scripture Department at BYU, he has published
several articles on religious and mental health issues. He
and his wife, Kaye Seegmiller Judd, have four children and
reside in Orem, Utah.

“Courses Taught: Book of Mormon, New Testament, LDS Marriage
and Family
Areas of Expertise: Religion and Mental Health; Marriage and
Family
Areas of Research: Doctrinal perspectives on current issues;
Philosophy and psychology of Religion; Marriage and Family”

CONCLUSION: KELLER’S REDEEMER COUNSELING EXPECTS ORDER OUT OF
CHAOS AS AN OUTCOME FOR HIS COMPROMISED INVOLVEMENT.

Is Tim Keller able to discern the fundamentally flawed approach
in the partnership his Redeemer Counseling Center is
undertaking? Keller says his ministry is “engaging to influence
the field of psychology with Christianity.” So again, how is he
going about this? According to his own website, Keller’s team is
working as part of a broad effort using the funding providing by
the Templeton Foundation to collaborate with research in order
to “merge psychology and Christianity.”

Also, again, how does Keller expect that to happen? How does Tim
Keller, co-founder of The Gospel Coalition and who is licensed
to ministry by the Reformed, conservative, theologically driven
Presbyterian Church of America intend to bring about this
outcome?

By–
1. Partnering with grant funding provided by an interfaith
universalist program focused on a totally new age /generic brand
of spirituality.
2. By aligning with and yoking to a historically anti-Gospel
organization driving much of the pro-homosexual and redefining
marriage movement now focused on “spirituality.”
3. By collaborating with a cult religion with a history of
polygamy, abuse, and corruption and which adheres to its own
religious text which it claims as a third testament of the
Bible.

Tim Keller is either a fool on a fool’s errand who understands
nothing about the Gospel or orthodox theology he espouses — or
he is wolf in sheep’s clothing who cares nothing for the Gospel
or orthodox theology he espouses. Either one of the above or a
mingled mixture of the two disqualify Keller for consideration
as a trustworthy leader in Evangelical Christianity today.

Matthew 16:11-12 (NKJV)11 How is it you do not understand that I did not speak to you
concerning bread?—but to beware of the [a]leaven of the
Pharisees and Sadducees.”12 Then they understood that He did not
tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the [b]doctrine
of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Acts 20:28-30 (NKJV)28 Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among
which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the
church [a]of God which He purchased with His own blood. 29 For I
know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in
among you, not sparing the flock. 30 Also from among yourselves
men will rise up, speaking [b]perverse things, to draw away the
disciples after themselves.

2 Peter 3:14-18 (NKJV)14 Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be
diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and
blameless; 15 and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is
salvation—as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the
wisdom given to him, has written to you, 16 as also in all his
epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some
things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people
twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the
Scriptures. 17 You therefore, beloved, since you know this
beforehand, beware lest you also fall from your own
steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked; 18
but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ.

1 John 4:1-6 (NKJV)Love for God and One Another1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits,
whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone
out into the world. 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: Every
spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is
of God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess [a]that Jesus [b]Christ
has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of
the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now
already in the world. 4 You are of God, little children, and
have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he
who is in the world. 5 They are of the world. Therefore they
speak as of the world, and the world hears them. 6 We are of
God. He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not
hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of
error.